


The Essential Condition of Life

by phaetonschariot



Series: Mutual Service [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-18
Updated: 2012-04-18
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/385941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phaetonschariot/pseuds/phaetonschariot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto's resurrection has consequences, consequences that the Doctor has taken enough interest in to travel to Cardiff for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Eurgh!" Jack made a noise of disgust as he and Gwen peeled off dirty and sopping clothing, the stains a combination of mud, weevil blood and sewer water. They were standing just inside the entrance to the Hub, and already Tosh and Ianto were watching them, the latter looking extremely displeased about the mess - but really, it was better than tracking it _through_ the whole place, wasn't it? "At least this'll be salvageable after a good wash, which I think we could use as well. Care to join me, Gwen?"

Gwen had been weighing the embarrassment of shucking her shirt over the discomfit of getting to the showers with it clinging to her, smell filling her senses, but at Jack's smirk she evidently made up her mind to leave it. "Not this time, Jack," she told him with as much dignity as she could muster. "Ugh, no wonder you told me to keep spare clothes here. Rhys thought I was mad."

"I'll... fetch a bag for those, shall I?" Ianto looked at the pile with distaste before moving off, keeping his eyes low until he'd passed by Jack, who was grinning and standing in a manner that may well have been posed. As though they needed him to draw attention to the fact that he was now shirtless. "Your t-shirt wasn't that dirty, sir," he called back over his shoulder.

Jack grinned wider.

He and Gwen had started picking their way through the Hub when a clumping, thunking noise heralded Owen's appearance at the other side of the room. He looked perturbed, enough so that after glancing around the room, eyes pausing on Jack for a moment, he made no comment on their fearless leader's state of dress. Instead, he frowned. "Guys, there's nothing supposed to be going on downstairs, is there?"

"Downstairs?" Jack repeated, brow furrowing in thought though he knew that if there had been, he would have known. "Not that I've heard, why?"

"Because I've just seen Suzie."

The other three all turned to stare at him. "Dead Suzie?" Jack clarified.

"No. Alive Suzie. She just walked out of the storeroom and when I followed her she was gone. Definitely her though, no doubt about it."

Even as he spoke Tosh had turned back to her computer, tapping keys rapidly as she drew up the rift monitoring program to check for activity spikes. "No rift activity."

"Okay, hold that thought." Jack raised a finger to punctuate his words. "Tosh, search the records for similar phenomena, get Ianto to help when he's free. Owen, get a detailed report down on paper so we can see exactly what we're dealing with. Me and Gwen are going to scrub up, and we'll all meet back here."

"With our clothes on, I hope," muttered Owen as they all left, heading in their separate directions. Jack grinned.

*

They reconvened in the boardroom with cups of Toshiko-made coffee; it seemed easier than waiting on Ianto to get back from the drycleaner's and then demanding a fresh brew before they could start. Even so plenty of time had elapsed between Owen's initial announcement and Jack, hair damp and tousled, looking around at the rest of his team. "Alright kids, what do we know?"

"Reports are trickling in through the central city," Ianto volunteered. "Not much on the news stations yet, but the police and emergency services have dealt with isolated cases and some of the internet forums have had hits."

"It'll probably break in the evening broadcast." Gwen tapped a finger absently on the surface of the table, taking a drink of coffee as she thought. "Though if activity doesn't increase it might just be one of those spot features. You know, cat adopts baby ducklings, face of Jesus seen in bologna, silly things."

"Space fillers, got it. Tosh?"

Apart from Ianto, she was the only one who'd brought notes to the meeting, and she shuffled them now as though looking for one in particular, though she had to have organised them before the meeting. "There were a few things. The Ghost Machine showed visions of the past, but obviously that wasn't in use this time. There's also St Teilo's Military Hospital which occasionally is the site for sightings of ghosts from World War One. There are scattered reports of similar phenomena fairly uniformly across the city but no more than in any other area of the world, and nothing that particularly stands out."

Ianto had blanched slightly at the mention of ghosts, and Jack glanced at him for a moment before looking back at the team with a nod. "Right. We'll have to get some readings of that storeroom, then. Gwen, if you could monitor police reports?"

He stood, indicating that the meeting was over, and watched them filtering out until only Ianto was left, quickly and efficiently gathering the discarded mugs. It was easy to halt him with a restraining hand on his arm, the lightest of touches bringing him to a complete stop, fixing Jack with a questioning look. "Sir?"

"Alright?"

"Fine, sir." 

His smile only looked a little forced, though with Ianto it was sometimes hard to tell. Jack was working on that though, and he thought he was making progress; either way it was an excuse to watch the Welshman, and he wasn't going to easily give one of those up. "Whatever we're dealing with," he assured him, "it's not the Cybermen."

"I know." He looked down for a moment, and when he glanced back up he really did seem to be a little less tense. "I'd better get the last of that mud off the floor and set up some search parameters for more reports."

"Thanks, Ianto." Jack followed him out, looking out across the Hub at his team as they set about their tasks - Owen heading to the morgue, attention apparently back on autopsies. Sometimes it was nice to just take a moment to watch them, marvel a bit at how brilliant they all were in their own little ways.

Then, he noticed the hand in the jar, kept out in the open where he could see it from most of the main floor. 

It was active.

*

"999, what's your emergency?"

"Oh god, there's someone in my house, you've got to-- please, send someone, there's a man upstairs!"

"Okay, ma'am, I'm sending a patrol car to your location. Can you tell me if the man is armed?"

"I don't know! I don't know, I don't know how he got in, oh my god..."

*

Psychic adviser Charity Wilkes was stunned and thrilled when a woman appeared in the middle of a session with a client. She managed to look like she was unfazed, smiled benignly when she was paid an extra hundred pounds, and went to raise her prices.

*

"Here we are!" The Doctor looked up from the TARDIS controls with a blinding grin, grabbing his jacket from where it lay over a cross-bar and ushering Martha towards the door as though they were in a great hurry. From what she'd learned about his behaviour so far in their travels, they probably were not.

"Where's here?" 

"Cardiff, early twenty first century! Nothing special, just a break to refuel, but we've got a day free so we might as well enjoy it. You fancy chips? I fancy chips."

He pushed the door open, Martha behind him, then almost stumbled backwards; she had to twist out of the way quickly to avoid banging into the back of him. Only after she'd regained her centre of gravity did she peer out the door to see what had happened.

A man in what looked like a 1940s greatcoat was standing in front of the TARDIS, staring at the Doctor. The Doctor was staring back. 

"Aren't you going to say hello?" the man said after a moment.

"Ah. Yes. Captain."

"Doctor. Good to see you."

"And you, same as ever." The Doctor paused, peering at the mysterious Captain, but whatever he was going to say next was forestalled by the arrival of another stranger. This one was significantly younger, dressed in a sharp-looking three-piece suit, but the expression on his face when he looked at the TARDIS - or the Doctor himself - was tight and closed off. "And who's this, then?"

"Ianto Jones, sir. We've met."

"Really?" asked the Captain.

"Really?" asked the Doctor, half a beat behind.

"Canary Wharf," Ianto Jones said tersely. "I asked you for help, and you left."

The Captain snorted softly. "Bit of a running theme with you these days, Doc?"

The Doctor was opening his mouth as though to argue, and Martha could foresee a scene on the plaza they were on that even the TARDIS' perception filters couldn't quite contain. She'd already been looking forward to a nice, relaxing day off, too. Frowning, she pushed out of the TARDIS past the Doctor, hands on hips. "Now, stop this, and will someone please tell me what's going on here? Who are you?"

She directed that last to the Captain, and immediate he graced her with a movie-star grin, teeth flashing unnaturally and charm oozing out of every pore, though in a much more attractive way than that sounded. "Cap'n Jack Harkness," he introduced himself, bringing a hand up to chuck her lightly under the chin. "And you are?"

"Martha Jones. No relation."

" _Jack_ ," the Doctor said warningly, in a way that made it sound as though either the Doctor had known him for a very long time, or Jack was an unstoppable force powered by inappropriately timed flirtation and - based solely on first impressions - probably quite a lot of sex. Jack seemed unrepentant, just turning that dazzling grin on the Doctor.

"Just saying hello! You never let me have any fun." He turned serious, then. "But Doctor. Canary Wharf. I saw the list of the dead, her name was on it, Rose Tyler."

"Oh! No! She's alive! Parallel universe, safe and sound! And Mickey, and her Mum!"

"Good old Rose," Martha muttered as the two men threw themselves at each other in a gleeful bear hug. Ianto glanced across at her with a sympathetic expression, as though he was well-used to being ignored when something shinier came along.

He sighed quietly. "It looks like they have some catching up to do. Fancy a cuppa, Miss Jones?"

A glance at the two men brought her to the same conclusion. Certainly playing third wheel while two old friends caught up on old times was never a barrel of laughs, and a cuppa did sound good right now. "Why thank you, Mr Jones."

To her surprise he actually held his elbow out for her to crook an arm around and she grinned. A proper gentleman in a three-piece suit, in 21st century Cardiff! Now there was something you didn't see every day, even traveling with the Doctor.

As they walked off, she heard the Doctor ask something and Jack reply in that carrying American voice, "She'll be fine, Doc. Ianto'll look after her."

Well, at least they'd noticed them leaving.

*

Martha, Ianto reflected, seemed quite a lot more tolerable than the Doctor. She was gregarious and happy to talk, complimenting him quite genuinely on his coffee ("I swear, he can travel through time and space in a phone box, meet any threat with a grin, but a decent cup of coffee? Not a chance!") as he opened up the passageway to take them down into the Hub. Personally Ianto thought that the brew from the smaller coffee machine in the Tourist Centre office lacked a little something, but it still did the trick alright.

"This is..." Martha trailed off, stepping past the open cog door to stare around the Hub. "What is this place?"

"Torchwood Three," Ianto declared proudly; for once, it actually did almost look impressive, with everyone's work areas relatively tidy and the pterodactyl swooping overhead. Martha ducked with a small shriek and Ianto gestured to the creature. "That's Myfanwy."

"Oh, is that what it is!" She looked faintly embarrassed at her reaction, straightening up and looking around again. "But the Doctor didn't mention this. Does he know it's here?"

Ianto, honestly, didn't have a clue, but he was spared saying so with the arrival of Owen from the autopsy bay; he'd evidently heard Martha's shriek and had come to investigate. "Oi, Teaboy, who's this? And where did Jack run off to?"

"Owen, allow me to introduce Miss Martha Jones. Martha, this is Owen Harper, _our_ doctor." He turned back to Owen. "Jack's up on the Plass. Gwen, can you bring up the CCTV? Right by the lift, please?"

The small group made their way over to Gwen's station where she was doing as requested; a moment later they could see the tall blue box, Jack leaning against a side of it talking seriously with the Doctor. "Bloody hell," Owen swore, leaning in as though he'd get a better picture that way. "That's the Doctor, isn't it? I'm right, aren't I, that's the Doctor!"

At his exclamation Toshiko got up, too, coming over to see what the fuss was about, and then they were all standing watching the monitors. "But that's not the Doctor. I've met the Doctor." Toshiko frowned.

"He can change his appearance. The files are required reading at London. Were, rather." Ianto nodded to Martha. "We were just looking into something when you arrived. There's a rift in space and time that runs through Cardiff, and we're here to monitor it and defend the city from whatever falls through."

"Speaking of;" Owen had grown bored of the view on the monitors and stepped back. "We've had a fatality. Don't 'spose you want to go pick up the body for me."

Ianto rolled his eyes briefly and shook his head. "My new license isn't here yet. Do you know how suspicious it looks to be pulled over with a corpse in the back and a license that was cancelled due to the death of the holder? Sorry, Owen, you're on your own on this one."

He sloughed off with a disgusted noise and Tosh followed shortly after to return to her station; Ianto led Martha to the couch to wait. Jack would return eventually, likely bringing the Doctor with him.

"You're... dead?" she asked, one sculpted eyebrow raising as though she were half joking, half serious.

He'd been hoping she wouldn't comment on that. "Not anymore. It's a long story."

There was a pause, evidently while she tried to decide whether to pry further, then she nodded. "So tell me about this something you're looking into, then."

*

Later, Ianto left Martha helping Owen with the autopsy, heading instead to Jack's office where the Captain had sequestered himself with the Doctor. He held a tray - two cups of coffee, one tea, along with a plate of biscuits - and he was determined to figure out what the hell was going on around here.

To that end he didn't wait for an answer to his knock, just pushing the door open enough to slip inside.

"Is that tea?" the Doctor asked, perking up visibly.

"Milk, two sugars," Ianto confirmed, holding out the cup for him to take. Oddly enough, with everything they _didn't_ know about the Doctor, his tea preference was listed in the files quite clearly. "Jack?"

"Ta, Ianto. How's it going out there?" He gestured for Ianto to sit, so he settled the tray on the side of Jack's desk, taking the guest chair - the Doctor was sprawled happily on the sofa, red converse sneakers up on the arm rest.

He took a sip of coffee before answering. "Reports are still coming in. They seem mostly benign, but we have one fatality, a man fell through a third storey running from the apparition of his dead brother. Owen and Miss Jones are doing the autopsy to see if he was under the influence of anything unusual or just scared." He paused, then added the piece he'd heard from Gwen. "Police are also trying to decide if the appearance of a ghost provides proof of death. Seems they were unable to charge a woman for the murder of her husband because they couldn't find his body."

Jack laughed at that, making Ianto smile into his coffee, pleased.

The Doctor didn't look nearly so lighthearted. "But you're wrong. All of this, both of you. Because I can hardly even look at you, Jack. You're a fixed point in time, and that should never happen. As for you," he added, nodding at Ianto, "I don't even know what you are. You're something completely new."

"I'm human," Ianto replied tightly. It was hard to bite his tongue, to keep from saying something dour and sarcastic about this man just waltzing in and bluntly decreeing Jack to be _wrong_ , both of them. Not with everything Jack did here, his work, stretching back through the entire previous century - because Ianto had checked, going through the Archives when he probably should have been sleeping, and even though most of Jack's personal files had been locked right down, there were always scraps. Pieces that went missing. And if someone was very determined, they could find those long lost clues. Jack was constant and reassuring, defending Cardiff from the shadows, and what was more he stayed, afterwards, instead of disappearing off into nowhere and leaving everyone to suffer through the aftermath alone.

"Welllll," the Doctor said, stretching the sound out to express the arguability of the point, and Ianto held back his frown. "What did you do, Jack?"

Jack looked across at Ianto over the top of his coffee mug, seeking permission, and Ianto shrugged one shoulder slightly. Maybe after he'd indulged his curiosity and finished barging in on their lives he'd get bored and leave.

"Ianto died." Jack shifted a pen on his desk, moving it parallel with the edge of the wood. "We had a glove that could bring people back - not for long, just thirty seconds, a minute, maybe two. We went into a custom lockdown triggered by a piece of cyber-technology salvaged from London and we had to wake Ianto up for the code to shut it down. Only... he stayed back. The glove formed a link between us. As long as the glove remains intact, he won't die."

The Doctor paused, then swung his feet to the ground, leaning forward to study them both intently. "Really? Big silver hand-thing?" He wriggled his fingers in an approximation of how they'd move with the glove around them. "Interesting... any side effects? Eyes going black, sepulchral voices emanating from the darkness, speaking in tongues?"

"Only after drinking Owen's coffee," Ianto deadpanned. Jack grinned. The Doctor didn't.

"Where's the glove?"

"Locked away. Both Jack and I are required to open the safe." He only realised he'd called Jack that out loud when the Captain turned to look at him, expression unreadable. "It's not a curiosity."

"No, I suppose it wouldn't be, when it's the only thing keeping you alive." The Doctor leapt to his feet and started pacing, muttering to himself unintelligibly; the occasional word that Ianto heard he mostly didn't understand, though Toshiko might have stood a slightly higher chance. Then quite suddenly he stopped, turning back to them with a wide grin. "Well then! Why don't we go and look at your guest in the autopsy bay!"

This suggestion, Ianto suspected, did not merit _nearly_ the level of excitement in the Timelord's voice.

*

Ianto held him back for a moment as the Doctor merrily made his way downstairs, acting as though he'd been here forever. He'd always been good at that, though. "He's wrong about you," Ianto told him, voice low and determined.

And Jack, who knew a lot more than Ianto about the Time Vortex, who had heard the Doctor's explanation of what Rose had done and understood enough about technology and organic systems to get why he'd reacted that way - even if it hurt, even if he hated it, even if it quite bizarrely made him want to apologise for what he was - was grateful for the effort. "I'm not sure he is, actually."

"Well, it doesn't make him _right_."

Thus declared, Ianto walked on ahead of him, returning to work, and Jack watched him go for a moment before hurrying after the Doctor.


	2. Chapter 2

In a house in St Fagans, Mabyn Cromwell was knelt on the kitchen floor, sobbing. Her Aunt Una had died three weeks ago, but she'd seen her just now, weeding the garden outside. For a moment it had been as though the sun had come out from behind the clouds. She could see things getting better for her, she really could - there was an opening in management training at work, and wasn't everyone always saying she'd be perfect for that? 

But Una was gone now, and that momentary relief from pain was gone with her.

*

"Well, Jack." Owen peeled off his gloves, tossing them into a half-full rubbish bin as Martha did the same. He liked Martha. She was smart and good to work with. "Near as we can tell... he fell out a window."

"You're a medical genius, Owen," Jack replied, and Owen graced him with a gesture that was recognised as obscene across seventeen systems. Then he scowled as the Doctor came past him, holding something that glowed blue and waving it around over the man's corpse. Bloody hell, this was _his area_ , couldn't anyone understand that?

He could recognise beeping, though, whether or not he had a clue what the equipment actually was, and he put off his bitching to wait for an explanation instead. "Hmm," the Doctor said, and looked off into the distance for a moment. "Well then! Nice place you've got here."

Owen stared at him for a moment, trying to decide whether to take him seriously or not. Given that he was one of Jack's friends, it was sort of a tough call; figured Captain Costume would hang out with complete loonies, and explained his fixation on the Teaboy, too. "This is an autopsy room," he pointed out after a moment.

"I can see that! And a beauty of an autopsy room it is."

Martha giggled, moving to sit on the steps below Jack's legs, and broke into a sudden yawn which she covered with her hand, looking embarrassed. "Christ, it's not that late, is it?"

"Time lag," Jack explained knowledgeably. "You know, I have a--"

" _Jack_." The Doctor gave him a quelling look, and though he didn't look particularly repentant, he didn't continue the offer. 

Owen wished he could do that. God knew it'd do them some good to have someone around who could keep Jack in line. "Bloody hell, Harkness, do you ever stop?" he muttered, and rolled his eyes when another significant look from the Doctor prevented Jack from saying... whatever he was going to say. "Well, I'm going to go see if there's any more coffee. Bit of friendly advice, Martha. You'd be better asking Jones if you need somewhere to crash. He's less likely to hump your leg and he knows just about everything about this damn place anyway."

He got a grateful smile for his effort, which he figured was about fair considering he'd almost complimented the Teaboy just then. "Nah, I reckon I'll just go back to the TARDIS. Feel free not to wake me for the running, Doctor. You promised me a holiday!"

The Doctor only grinned at her, a slightly manic expression that made him look something less like human and more like a living flesh troll doll. "You'll just miss all the fun!"

Bonkers, Owen decided, half-stomping up the stairs out of the room. Both of them, utterly bonkers.

*

Ianto was most definitely not sulking in the Archives. Quite the contrary, he was using his mastery of the alphabet and knowledge of those areas of the large area that diverged wildly from any rational recognised system of organisation to search for anything they might have missed, anything that could help them. Twice so far he had seen ghosts, one looking to be a woman from the sixties, the other a man in early 20th century clothing, and to his surprise he'd found his heart beating faster not through fear or apprehension, but a small, secret thrill at these glimpses into the past. Torchwood had been around for so long... How much of that time had Jack seen? He hadn't told Ianto that, so many of his secrets still locked inside, but there was always the promise of learning more of them. 

Finally he gave up, heading upstairs and focusing his hearing for the sounds of voices. With two extra people in the Hub the main floor seemed almost merry compared to the vast, lonely Archives.

He was surprised, when he emerged, to almost bump into the Doctor where he was staring up into the heights of the Hub, tacky cardboard 3-D glasses settled on his ears. Looking up himself, he realised what the Doctor was looking at - the pterodactyl swooping through the air, showing off for the stranger.

"Myfanwy," he said.

The Doctor looked at him, startled. "Eh?"

"Her name. Myfanwy." He gestured upwards as though there could be any more confusion, and was spitefully - momentarily - tempted to call the creature down for a treat. He refrained only because the possibility existed that the Doctor would actually enjoy almost being landed on by a gigantic, long-extinct carnivore with enormous claws. He seemed perverse like that.

Peering at him now, the Doctor pulled off his glasses, shoving them in a pocket. "No one ever said how you died. --Now that's something I don't get to say every day!"

His honest glee at the statement rankled slightly, and Ianto wished he had something to occupy his hands. Instead he shoved them in his pockets, turning away slightly. "It's not a topic of conversation."

"Ooh, no, I suppose not. Still, you survived Canary Wharf."

"No one survived Canary Wharf." He hadn't intended to say it and the admission surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise the Doctor. Now that he'd said it, though, he met the Timelord's eyes. He should be told about the mess he'd left behind. "We're just waiting for the other shoe to drop."

It was strange how quickly the Doctor's facial expressions changed, from curiosity to excitement to solemnity. "Jack know you feel like that?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "We're working on it." He turned fully now, heading back to the kitchenette, and if he thought he heard the Doctor's soft apology, well, his footsteps on the metal grating echoed strangely in the air.

*

The investigation stalled not long after and one by one everyone filtered out, going home to bed or out to wherever it was they went at night. When Ianto left the main Hub for his living quarters the Doctor and Jack were still sitting in his office, catching up.

He woke early. The base was quiet, but there were dirty dishes in the kitchenette, and he added cleaning them up into his morning routine. And it was routine now, one task after another that he could work through efficiently, quietly, without really thinking about it. It was only when he sat down to run through the non-urgent messages and alerts that had come in overnight that he really focused on what he was doing, sorting them into categories of useless, possible, pass on to Jack.

There were footsteps behind him, and he finished reading and cataloging the last message before looking up - and then quickly down again when he realised Jack was only half-dressed. "Morning, sir," he greeted him, rising. "Coffee?"

"Yeah, thanks Ianto. These come in last night?"

"About half of them are from the police station. Some were obviously overreactions. I think they're a little spooked, to be honest." He raised his voice for the last so it would echo out to Jack as he poured their drinks, pulling some leftover Chinese out of the fridge for breakfast. 

"Looks like they had at least five ghosts just in the precinct itself overnight." Something was beeping on the computer, and Ianto closed his eyes for a moment, trying to visualise what Jack was doing. Checking his email, probably - that was the sound of changing a log-in, which he wouldn't have to do for most tasks. He really had just rolled out of bed, then.

Ianto swallowed, arranging the breakfast things neatly on a tray to bring out. "Six, actually, one on two separate occasions. Look at the second most recent."

"Hm?" Jack took his coffee absently, sipping at it as he flipped back through the messages to the one Ianto was talking about. "What about it?"

The third container he looked in had some low mein that Toshiko hadn't eaten the day before. Perfect. "Sounds a bit emotional for an on-duty police officer. Spring roll?"

And of course wherever Jack came from didn't have a clue about proper manners, so now that his mind was on something else he just grabbed the roll and ate it with his fingers, getting grease all over them even as he typed at the computer station. Ianto winced a little and tried not to think about Jack spilling on himself. "He does a bit. Check it with Gwen when she comes in, she might wanna look into it." He snatched up another couple of rolls and took his coffee off back to his office, presumably to finish getting dressed.

Oh, that damnable, charming man. 

*

And somewhere in Roath, as Maggie Smith sobbed to herself in loss, her husband walked to the wall safe, pulled out a gun, loaded it and shot himself in the head.

*

"Ooh, I love a meeting!" The Doctor beamed, hustling Martha into the cosy little briefing room where most of Jack's team was sitting around a table. There was coffee and tea ready and he could smell lingering traces of Chinese food, soy sauce and fried oil, as well as the combined mint and citrus and vanilla and musk of twenty first century hygiene. Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. 

"Morning, Doctor," Jack said. "How'd you get in?"

"Gwen Cooper let me in. Mind you... she does look awfully familiar." He frowned, trying to remember where he'd seen her, probably at a different age, or maybe someone else who just looked like her. Something in the jawline and eyes, maybe. He had been to Cardiff several times. "Never mind, what's all this? Ah, _research_ , excellent! Never do research, me, mostly just improvise. Usually seems to work out. That's the problem with plans, something always goes wrong. So! What've we found out?"

Behind him, Gwen hurried into the room with another sheaf of papers and a, "Don't start without me!" that made him realise his demand for information had probably been rude. 

Jawline and eyes, he thought-- _oh!_ "Gwyneth!"

She looked at him, puzzled, as she sat. "No... Gwen."

"I've met one of your ancestors, I have. Lovely girl. Saved the world. Bit of a family tradition now, I suppose."

"Speaking of," Jack interrupted loudly, and Martha laughed, low and quiet. "Gwen, what've you got?"

"Ianto was right," she said, rifling through her papers for one in particular and smiling at the aforementioned as he set her coffee in front of her. "We're getting increasing emotional disturbances in the people who've seen the ghosts. Highs when they appear, then crashing afterwards."

"Some kind of psychic field?" Toshiko, who as it turned out was not a doctor but a computer technician, was tapping at some kind of basic handheld system - though it was still far and beyond what Earth ought to have in this time period. He was certain he recognised components in the Torchwood computers from several centuries in the future, not to mention at least a dozen different planets. And it wasn't as though it was all Jack, either, because some of them had clearly been in place for far longer than he claimed to have been in control for. Even though he couldn't help but disapprove on principle, he almost admired them at the same time - those limited, primitive little minds, managing to put all this together well before their time. 

Owen nodded thoughtfully. "Pretty short range. Do they put off any readings we can trace?"

"Not that I've seen so far, but we only have the right equipment inside the Hub, and the first three we saw were out of camera range. There are quite a few places downstairs that aren't covered by CCTV. I rolled back the footage from last night and two more appeared, but because no one was around they don't seem to have made any connection."

A strange sort of expression filtered across Ianto's face when Toshiko mentioned the CCTV blind spots, so quickly that the Doctor thought it quite likely that no one else had noticed. Odd. But then, this place seemed full of secrets, perfect for them in fact. Secrets and traumas, because they all were so beautifully broken, this team of Jack's. Did he seek out the fractured, wounded minds and attempt to give them purpose, or was it the purpose that broke them? The Doctor would have believed either.

Across the room from him Martha frowned. "But what are they doing? Feeding off the energy? Because then they'd be getting stronger... lasting longer."

"The emotional effects seem to be getting more extreme," offered Gwen.

"Sounds like a lot of bloody theorising to me," Owen replied. "What are we going to do, sit around the Hub and wait for one to turn up so we can scan it?"

There was a pause as they all looked at him. "Actually," Jack said after a moment, slowly; "we are."

*

To increase their chances (and to make sure that they all weren't struck by an otherworldly melancholy at once) they spread out, settling down into various places around the base. It really was a strange little place, nothing at all like Torchwood Tower's sleek white lines and glass. Cool and solid, it seemed to be built into the very foundations of Cardiff, and the Doctor could feel the energy of the Rift all around him, in every brick, every fixture, every drop of water. Seemed an odd choice for Jack, who'd been one of the few people he'd allowed to tinker with the TARDIS. Too... basic.

He had the feeling he'd been put in this part of the Archives deliberately. There didn't seem to be anything particularly outstanding in any of the boxes or shelves, though there were some neat little toys, and he found himself perfectly content to rummage through the area studying their collection. All things that had fallen through the Rift, as he understood it - oh, perhaps there were one or two that'd come the old-fashioned way, in ships that were dismantled now, but most of them seemed suffused with that singular glow.

He was chuckling a little over some of the filing mistakes - in particular an item labeled "unknown - medical/learning aid? - probably harmless" that the Doctor knew to in fact be a teddy bear from Rillos - when he heard footsteps approaching, and a moment later Ianto entered, coffee in one hand, tea in the other. "Anything?" he asked, holding the tea out with a steady hand, and the Doctor accepted it gratefully.

"No ghosts!" he replied cheerfully, taking a drink and then setting the cup down on top of a cabinet as he opened a drawer. Files. So was the next drawer down, but one cabinet to the right yielded a haphazard jumble of pieces that weren't even attempting to be in order. "Oh, I haven't seen one of these in _years_!" he exclaimed, holding up a Chronomodulator. "Lifetimes, even. Matches colours. Utterly useless, but hours of fun when you get locked into an art gallery. Long story, that. That's what this is like, a garage sale. Never know what you're going to find. Whole lot of broken plates, and then something brilliant."

"Uh, Doctor." There was a funny sort of note in Ianto's voice, and a strange feeling in the air... like something wonderful was happening.

He turned, and they were not alone in the room. Pacing quietly was a young girl, her dark hair cropped short around her skull. She was shorter than the both of them to some great degree, with a face that was pretty without being stunning, and for a long moment the Doctor simply stared at her. Oh. _Oh._ It had been a long time since he'd seen this girl, so, _so_ long. He wanted to reach out and touch her, see her turn and smile at him though she showed no sign of even being aware that they were there, and for a moment he almost thought he was going to. "Susan," he whispered, and though she didn't react, it was alright. He had never thought he'd see any of them again, not since Gallifrey had burned, and even this small glimpse was a gift. Even the wrongness that was Jack was worth it for this.

And then-- she simply took another step forward and was gone, and a crushing emptiness overtook him. No, no, no, it hadn't been enough, hadn't been anything _like_ enough. He should never have let her go in the first place, should have kept her close to him like she'd claimed she wanted, ignored the knowledge that her heart was resting in the twenty second century with a mere human. He was vaguely aware of the floor under his knees and wetness on his face but for several long, long moments that was all until he realised someone was speaking to him.

" _Doctor_!" Speaking to him and shaking his shoulder, and he turned to look at the thing Jack had made with anguish behind his eyes. 

"Susan," he said again. "That was Susan."

"I know, and I'm sorry Doctor, but she wasn't real. She was already dead, you couldn't have done anything."

There was something funny about what Ianto was saying, how he was saying it, but he didn't care, couldn't care, even if some small part of him knew this was an after-effect of the--

_Oh._

He struggled to his feet, staring at Ianto, looking past the layer of wrongness as though it was a sheer window-lace. "You're not sad," he realised.

"No," agreed Ianto, puzzled... and then comprehension dawned on his face. "No, I'm not."

The Doctor pushed the last of the devastation aside, grinned, and started running. Time to find Jack.


	3. Chapter 3

Nothing was happening, and Jack wondered how long they would have to wait. Stuck on the slow path like this, one might be forgiven for thinking he was good at waiting, but still he ached for the ease of time travel, for being able to skip ahead in the story. The trenches had been like this too - "hurry up and wait", they called it, long periods of inactivity followed by desperate bursts of adrenalin and fear and violence and the bonds forged there were so intense, so strong, because no one understood it who hadn't been there. 

Torchwood was like that, sometimes. Different, but somehow the same. 

It didn't mean he had to like it. The anticipation made every moment drag on, and he suspected he was beginning to annoy Tosh with his too-frequent check ups, asking her if anything was happening and demanding she demonstrate a sweep of the whole Hub "just in case" as though she couldn't do her own job when he never would have looked twice at her UNIT file if that had been the case.

He forced himself not to go back over, to trust her to be brilliant on her own watch. It would be better if he was doing something constructive while he waited, probably - there were reports and requisition forms that needed checking and signing off on, and he had a folder in his email for things he needed to deal with that was never empty. It was hard enough to force himself to do those tasks at the best of times, though. He'd never wanted to be an administrator. Half the time, he wasn't sure he wanted to be a leader, either.

"Jack!" Tosh's voice was a welcome relief and he launched himself out of his chair, clattering out of his office and navigating the metal walkways to her station. "Something's happening in the Archives, I think--"

She didn't have time to explain before the Doctor burst into the room, Ianto behind him, already rattling on. "--I should have seen it earlier, of course, but I never expected to see it _here_ , and of course it was always purely academic because it was never supposed to get this far, not in your species! And Jack, well, you're like powering a hundred watt lightbulb with the sun, you are."

He seemed to realise then that they were all staring at him and broke out into a broad grin, one that, though Jack was unfamiliar with the quirks of this new regeneration, seemed to loudly declare, "I am brilliant!"

"Ianto Jones," the Doctor said significantly, "is not sad."

Jack blinked, looking at Ianto, who simply shrugged. No clues there, then. "Well that's great, but... mind cluing us in on what that means?"

"The circuit! Well, more specifically, the _glove_. It's a conductor! Which is fantastic, really, if you understand the theory behind it, which is all very complicated and far beyond anything you have here, but the thing is, your brains were never meant to be compatible with it. In the Thraxxicilians it works wonders. Their brains are wired up like Christmas trees, electricity zipping around all over the place, but compared to them you humans are so dense you can only get a short burst through the circuit, like-- like static. Enough for maybe two or three minutes of activity. And then you come along, Jack. And you _dazzle_. Normally the glove wouldn't accept that, you'd be incompatible, but somehow you overrode that and connected the circuit anyway and now it's been thrown out of balance and all that extra energy is whizzing through the air causing all sorts of problems. Though, good thing it was you, Jack. Anyone else and it might've driven them mad."

He'd been pacing as he spoke, gesticulating wildly to demonstrate points. Jack knew that if he actually got the Doctor to sit down and talk about it properly, most of it would go well over his head - maybe Owen would have slightly better luck, but there was so much they didn't know in this time period, all sorts of things about physics and technology and the mind. It was never more obvious than in times like this, the Doctor ranting on about something, and though Jack could sort of see it, he knew that the picture forming in his mind had to be incredibly basic compared to all the nuances and meanings that the Doctor just instinctively _knew_.

"So what do we do?" asked Ianto, and it was only because Jack was watching, listening, that he noticed the faintest tension in the question. "Destroy the glove?"

"Oh, no, no, no. Well, yes, you could." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, just making it stick out even more messily. "That would be a bit wasteful, though. And probably send a shockwave through the circuit that would fry your brain. No, all you have to do is take it out of the circuit."

"How do we do that?" Tosh asked, and it was only then that Jack realised she'd been typing the whole time, notes on what the Doctor was saying that she'd undoubtably fill in later in greater detail. He didn't think anyone could type fast enough to follow the Doctor when he was in full-on explaining mode, not even Tosh who sometimes amazed him with the dexterity in her fingers as they flew over keyboards, tapping with complete and utter accuracy. "Complete containment? We have some security boxes that might be able to block the field it's producing."

It occurred to Jack that she and the Doctor would probably be amazing together. Amazing or awful. They were both bright like this, the Doctor practically thrumming with excited energy and Tosh intense and utterly focused. Neither of them were looking at Ianto, who seemed to want to ask but be afraid, _terrified_ to at the same time.

Jack would have touched him if he'd been standing closer, a light connection of hand on arm or shoulder. Instead, he hoped he could communicate in a glance what he was thinking - _you can trust me to ask the hard questions for you._ It wasn't much, as promises went, but it was something. "More importantly," he broke in, "what would happen to Ianto?"

Ianto's eyes flew to him in-- surprise? before his expression softened into something like gratitude, and it struck Jack as incredibly sad that someone like that would be surprised by simple human kindness. He wished he understood more about this beautiful, broken man who was at turns sarcastic and silent, as though he couldn't quite decide whether or not he deserved a place here.

"Oh, nothing," the Doctor assured him, and then sobered suddenly, halting the relief that had just started swelling up at his reply. "I can't fix you, Jack. Either of you. You've got enough energy in you to last the both of you for-- a long, long time. I can put that glove in a box or take it with me, pull it out of the circuit, and you'll just shift to compensate. No more energy will leak out and you'll both live and not a thing in the universe could stop you. But if I do that, even destroying the glove wouldn't do anything. The only way to break this is to do it now."

Oh, god. It was one thing to... assume something, to hope or to fear it, but to have it stated like that was _fact_. And even though _he_ wasn't being offered a choice, he wondered if he could even make it if he had been. Die now, right now, or live forever? It seemed... so, so impossibly cruel.

He couldn't read anything in Ianto's face, and that terrified him too.

*

According to the police reports that Gwen was still receiving there had been at least two suicides definitely linked to the ghosts, both having had witnesses, but this information didn't fill Ianto with any sense of urgency.

To be honest he felt a little bit numb, sitting in the room that he'd converted into living quarters. They weren't anything special - double bed in a corner, which he was sitting on now, walls to his back and side as though they were shielding him; desk, wardrobe, bookshelves. He had a laptop in here, connected to the Torchwood network, and a radio so he could play his music, though no tv - he had to go out into the actual Hub for that. No kitchen or laundry, though there was a small bathroom (toilet, sink, small cabinet, mirror) through a couple of doors and of course the massive Victorian shower rooms. It was nice, though, cosy, and he liked it more than he'd liked his flat, which had been a place of convenience with crappy water pressure and a shower that was either too hot or too cold.

This was a place of convenience too, of course. He didn't know if it was enough - if Torchwood was enough - if whatever possibilities he had with Jack was enough - to throw away his chances at death for, though. 

He didn't even know what life without death was. It was one of those things common to everyone, death, one of the subjects that every culture, every mythology, was obsessed with. Creation, sex, death. Whether it was an afterlife that you believed in or just the peace of eternal rest, it was a release from life, something to be feared and longed for. He'd made that decision, once, and now he had to make it again, only there was no third option. No 'wait and see'. No leaving it up to chance.

Die now. Or live forever.

He couldn't even comprehend forever. The human brain wasn't wired for it, couldn't visualise large numbers. He knew intellectually how much a thousand was but he couldn't imagine what a crowd of a thousand people would look like, exactly, couldn't imagine a thousand years of life. Ten thousand. A million.

God, how he envied Jack for having this forced on him. Some choices were too terrible for anyone to have to make. He wasn't even sure if knowing that Jack would always be there made it easier or harder - because he would, always, be there, and they'd really only known each other for a matter of weeks. It was like a grain of sand on a beach. A grain of sand in a _desert_. How long would they even get on? Would they come to hate each other? Would Jack come to resent him, having to take his pain every time something happened to him? (For that matter, what would happen to the circuit if they were apart, the galaxy stretched between them, or even separated through time? The Doctor had said nothing could fix them, but had he accounted for distances like that?)

His head ached and he wanted to hide somewhere deep inside the Hub where no one could find him and just go to sleep. Let someone else think about the universe for a while.

A knock at the door startled him, and he looked up, called, "Yeah?" He wasn't sure entirely who he was expecting - probably Jack, maybe Tosh, or Gwen, who he didn't like as much as Tosh but knew she liked to give advice. It made her feel important, maybe, or at least useful.

Instead, though, it was Martha, and she looked around the room with interest as she entered, coming over to sit on the bed a few feet from him. "You really were dead, weren't you?"

"Yup."

She shook her head in amazement, staring across the room, though he doubted she was looking at anything in particular. "All this time, everything the Doctor shows me, and I can still be surprised. There's so much out there, and I never knew. I never knew."

"Is that supposed to help?" he asked; it came out sharper than he'd intended, or perhaps not quite sharp enough. He knew there was more out there, of course he did. He'd worked for Torchwood for over two years, he'd seen more than just daleks and Cybermen, and then there were the nights when Jack got into a talking mood. He didn't say much that was blatantly out of place, but Ianto was good at putting pieces together. While the others pushed and asked questions that Jack never answered, he just listened.

Martha shook her head slowly, though he thought it was more because she didn't know what to say than an answer to his query. "Forever's a long time. I don't even know how old the Doctor is. Sometimes he seems like a little boy, but then he gets this look like... he's lived through everything. I can't even imagine. The things he says, it's like he's seen the most terrible things the universe has to offer." She glanced over at him, finally, pulling a leg up to curl in front of her. "You said... you were at Canary Wharf. I had a cousin there. They said it was a terrorist attack, even though everyone's seen, and I thought... I just couldn't believe people were accepting that. Coz I can't, you know, even though everything was just people dying, I thought there had to be wonderful things too."

It was true, he supposed, about the wonderful things. Even if it was just small things, like the Doctor's amusement at the device that matched colours, or the toys that fell through the rift that Jack showed them how to play with sometimes. But was that enough? God, it was so hard to say. "I know," he said, voice quiet in the room. Somehow it really _felt_ like they were underground - maybe that was what he liked about this room. It was nothing like Torchwood Tower. It was solid, built into the Earth, not apart from it. "But it was, sort of, a terrorist attack. You can't know unless you were there."

"First time I met the Doctor I went to the moon. Half the Earth was almost destroyed, and it was one of the best days of my life." She smiled, a little, then reached over to pat him on the leg. "Sorry for barging in. I'd better go back to the Doctor before he gets into anything."

She left, and Ianto leaned back against the brickwork, back of his head not-quite-fitting into the ninety degree angle of the corner. He wasn't any closer to a decision than when he'd started.

*

Jack kicked the rest of the team out eventually, even though it was the middle of the day and the problem wasn't solved yet. It was all just waiting anyway, and he could sense how uncomfortable they were - none of them knowing what to say and not wanting to look at him.

He wished he knew what Ianto was thinking. It felt as though they were waiting for a jury to come back. Either way the world would be saved, of course - or Cardiff's emotional stability, at least - but the decision was still so weighty.

They shared stories to pass the time, some that the others didn't know or the Doctor falling into the pattern of "do you remember when--" with one or the other of them. No, Jack corrected himself, they weren't waiting for a jury, it was the night before a battle, and the troops were sitting in the barracks passing the time. (He knew, really, that there wasn't a comparison that fit, but somehow it made him feel better, thinking of them.)

He stopped listening to Martha when he became aware of footsteps approaching. Not the usual brisk pace of Ianto working, but slow and unsure, and he had to force himself to stay sitting, not to get up and rush him.

Ianto came in with the glove in his hands, free of the box it had been in - they had taken it out of the safe before he left to think, and Jack wondered if he'd been holding it this whole time. 

For a moment Ianto glanced around, probably taking in empty stations and absent colleagues, then he walked over to the trio, and there was something childlike in his hesitance that Jack wanted to wrap himself around and hold onto. God, they were all so young, his people. 

"Take it away." Ianto's voice was raw as he held the glove out to the Doctor; it matched something inside Jack's chest that couldn't decide if it wanted to ache or sing, and all he really knew, right now, was that he didn't want to look away from the man in front of him. 

The Doctor took the glove, silent in due deference to the mood of the moment, and Ianto turned to look back at Jack, their eyes meeting. Strangely, inexplicably, Jack felt like crying.

 

**Epilogue:**

"Yes."

Ianto stands in the doorway of Jack's office, nothing in his hands. Normally he will come up here with a cup of coffee or a file, some excuse for the intrusion, but tonight it is only him, leaning on the jamb as Jack looks up in confusion.

"I didn't ask a question."

The honest bewilderment in his expression makes Ianto smile, just a little, and he walks further into the room - not to the seat opposite Jack, but to the sofa. This is not a discussion that pertains to their jobs. Jack is curious, of course, curious enough to follow him. "Yes," Ianto repeats, and his smile comes easier this time, genuinely amused at the situation, at [the memory](http://phaetonschariot.livejournal.com/15139.html). "I'm into necrophilia."

One heartbeat, two, and then Jack grins, laughter bubbling out of his throat. "Ianto Jones," he says, leaning forward to touch a hand to Ianto's jaw; he can feel the callouses against his skin, and the warmth of Jack, and turns into it. "One day I'm going to show you all the worlds of creation."

"I believe you." Before Jack can reply he reaches out to tug him closer, pressing their lips together in a kiss - and though it isn't perfect, and neither are they, he has wanted this since the night they caught Myfanwy. They can worry about forever in the future. For now, there is this.


End file.
